i will scream “JEM CARSTAIRS HAS FLAWS” into the abyss until someone hears me, he is a cinnamon roll but his flaws make him a beautiful character
he’s incredibly insecure and self-deprecating. physically insecure is seen definitely in clockwork prince when jem and tessa make out, because when tessa sees his bare chest he literally apologises for how he looks.
but jem wasn’t just “ayo ok you love tessa so do i lol u go kid” he was literally terrified when he found out that will loved tessa and tessa loved him back? because he was so afraid that tessa might never have loved him, that she was only trying to save his feelings. and that he’d deprived the two most important people in his life of happiness because he’d been too blind to see it.
and he’s literally so self-deprecating. “i am no good with words.” “i apologise– i look-” … he looks beautiful and he’s wonderfully poetic but he tells himself and others this, he puts himself down all the goddamn time because he doesn’t realise that others care about him as much as they do.
and we see it again on the bridge - he does nothing but put down the relationship he’d had with tessa in comparison to her’s and will’s, because he’s plucked up the courage to do this but he knows that they had such a great love and he doesn’t really know what he can do that could match that. they both loved will.
it takes him genuine effort to be as kind and as considerate and as loving as he presents himself! tessa says so in clockwork prince. people take him for granted, because he works so hard to be a good and just and gentle person, even when things hurt him. there’s a massive difference between someone who is always lovely and floating like a generic soft-spoken anime character, and someone who genuinely has to work at being kind and gentle because it’s how he’d like to be, how he’d like to treat people. how he feels the people around him deserve to be treated.
he’s also such a hopeless romantic that being in love makes him act impulsively and rashly - possibly because he has no experience with love at all. i’d say the fact that he endangers himself and others for love is a flaw.
guys…. jem carstairs has flaws… just because you ignored them doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any. it’s easy to overlook jem and call him boring or two-dimensional but so many people ignore jem and brush over him as a secondary love interest or an inferior character to will (even you, cassie clare, im looking at you) that they don’t recognise his flaws.
ellievsbear
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
stormborns
titsay
